Gymnastics

Gymnastics was my passion growing up.  I started the sport in elementary school, choreographing my first floor exercise routine to the Beatles’ song ‘Hey Jude’.  I still remember that 6^th grade routine.  I continued throughout high school, went on to make the Cortland State gymnastic team, and even went back and coached my high school’s team after college.  Gymnastics was my life and I used every free moment in high school to go to the gym and practice.  If my grades slipped, my parents threatened gymnastics and they went right back up.  I have so many great memories of the sport, but I also can’t help but to be amazed at how different it is today than in ‘my day’.

The equipment has improved drastically for the better.  For example, back in the 70s and even the early 80s, the balance beams were not padded.  So when I did no-handed forward rolls on them, I was rolling my spine along a 4-inch piece of wood, over and over and over until it became a sure move for me.  When I fell and caught my leg or arm on the beam, the purple bruises confirmed its wooden surface.  This is not to say that gymnasts today don’t get bruised from falling, but the padding on the beam nowadays does provide a little cushioning.

For floor exercise, I used to have to strategically place the rectangular mats in the gym horizontally across the floor area where my tumbling passes would take place.  During meets, sometimes the mats moved and sometimes they stayed put.  It depended on which school you were at and how good their mats were.  All the other moves that could have benefited from padding were done on the hard gym floor.  Thankfully, today the entire surface of the floor exercise area is well padded.

The vaulting horse is different too.  We used them as horizontal pieces of equipment to hurdle over, with the big move being a handspring with a twist.  Today the horses are vaulted over vertically, generally starting with a round-off on the springboard to begin your tumbling pass over the horse.  The uneven bars are also much different and are used much farther apart, with better material for the bars.  All these improvements have been for the better and help the safety of the gymnasts.   

The scoring is also very different today.  It used to be easy understanding the system from 1 to 10.  Nadia Comaneci, the Romanian gymnast and winner of 3 Olympic medals in 1976, was the first female gymnast to ever get a perfect 10 in an Olympic event.  Tens were rare for a long time, but soon after she broke the  barrier, a new system of scoring was created, which also coincided with the increased difficulty that was being required for each piece of equipment.

When I graduated high school in 1975, the moves that we considered difficult are considered routine today.  For example, the hardest move anyone attempted on the balance beam was a single back-handspring, and you only saw one or two gymnasts doing this move at the sectional competition at the end of the season.  On floor exercise, you might have seen a back flip with a twist or one or two girls attempting a double back.  The difficulty of the moves brings me next to the area of spotting.

A gymnast can only attempt to learn new moves if she has a coach who can safely teach it to her and spot her while learning it.  I remember Mr. Hank Alzieri, the Ossining coach, helping out our Yorktown team with a few ‘joint practices’ so he could spot some of our more difficult moves.  He was a big, tall, strong man and he knew how to spot more difficult moves.  More importantly, we felt confident that no matter what we did, which was often changing our mind mid-air, he would safely catch us.  When I went on to coach my high school team after college, there was one gymnast who was extremely talented and I did not know how to spot all the moves she was learning.  Luckily she also attended a private gymnastics gym and they did most of the teaching.  When she had the move down, I basically had to ‘be there’ just in case.

Many schools have done away with gymnastics because of the liability. I remember one time during high school, my friend Joann knocked out her front teeth on the trampoline in gym class while doing a front flip.  She tucked so hard that her knees knocked into her teeth.  It is a shame that hardly any high schools still have gymnastics teams, because I see kids coming into my classroom every month with casts and crutches from every other sport.  Where the schools have come short for the sport, private gymnastics gyms have sprung up all over to take their place.   Maybe that is better in some ways with highly trained coaches and up-to-date safety equipment. But I sure do miss going to watch a local meet with kids I know.

My friend Jack used to call me Cathy Rigby.  Maybe you know her as Broadway’s Peter Pan, but way before that she was an Olympic gymnast.  This would be analogous to knowing Paul McCartney as a member of Wings instead of the Beatles.  Anyway, her specialty, like mine, was the balance beam.  She participated in the 1972 Olympics and my friend Jack used to call me Cathy Rigby because of our love for the beam and for the sport.   I miss those days, but am happy for all the memories.

Cortland State gymnastics meet at SUNY Buffalo in 1976 during warm ups, doing a back walk over.  Notice the balance beam has no padding.

I guess I got my gymnastics genes from my father.  He would do handstands just about anywhere.  Here he is on a lifeguard chair at the beach, most likely showing off for the girls.